HCLM BLOG

Last Monday I got a call from a couple that I had married just over a year ago. Her mother had been murdered in St. Pete (a community to which she had recently moved to). The killer was a very troubled man who killed his sister, her mom and shot two others who were at the house. He later killed a police officer in the standoff. He was shot 6 times and lived. Because the mom wasn't connected yet with a church body, they were just going to have a funeral at the funeral home by a stranger. The Holy Cross staff (Chris thanks for a great chapel for the Pre-school) was gracious enough to pick up my tasks that day and gave me the day to be with the family and do the service.

Last week I spent three days in Madison, Wisconsin and then this week three days in St. Louis, Missouri. You know that I was very cold in both of those places and I was very glad that it got back up to 66 yesterday. So I am glad to be home!

The first trip was to hear how the LCMS may restructure to try and work more efficiently. There were about 200 people from the LCMS there and we had a lot of discussion over the three days. I heard people talking about all kinds of things that they did not want to change! We have been losing members every year in the LCMS for the last 50 years! I think that it might be time to think about CHANGE!

The St. Louis trip was for a Theological discussion of Worship in our church body. There was about 350 people there for the discussion and every table that I was a part of talked about how we are going to promote the Traditional Liturgy and Worship style and how bad contemporary worship is. The one thing that they all seemed to agree with was that we should try to avoid any kind of CHANGE!

That is the real reason that I am glad to be home, not the weather, but the climate at Holy Cross. We live in a climate of CHANGE. We look for ways to change, we strive to find new ways to worship and new ways to serve.   We strive to find new ways to show people that a life lived with Christ is better than a life lived with out Him! Stay tuned as we march through the new doors that our Lord opens each day.

Paul

So as I write this, it is 32 degrees, this promises to be the coldest week of the year for the country, it is cold everywhere! That is why the Missouri Synod decided that this week would be a good time to send the executives of each district to a conference in MADISON WISCONSIN!!!!!! What where they thinking?

But as I made my way to the temperature control of the house and tried to see just how warm I could make it, I was reminded of something. We pump up the temp and somehow think that if we set it higher it will get hotter faster, so we crank it up to 90. The truth is that it will raise the temp at the same rate no matter how high you have it set. You simply over work the system when you set ridiculous temperatures.

As we start a new year and we think about resolutions, we do the same thing. I am going to lose weight and so I go on the most restrictive diet that I can find, no carbs, no fats, no food that has any flavor! Then I wonder why I go off the diet so fast. Perhaps you make the reslove to get in shape, so you start working out for an hour everyday!!! Soon you don't go at all. You pledge to watch less TV and so you reduce down to 1 hour a day that you watch the news!!! You are unable to continue that either.

All of these things are just like the temperature in your house, they will only go so fast and moving to the extreme will only frustrate you. The same is true of our Christian Walk! We resolve to get closer to God and so we decide that we will read through the whole Bible this year, pray for an hour each day and never miss a church service. Surprise we last about a week! We need to realize that growing as a child of God is a gradual thing, we move closer and closer to Him as we ease into a closer relationship with the Heavenly Creator!

Let's resolve to simply be the children that our Creator would want us to be and know that this is going to take time and effort. Have a great 2010 as we live for the Lord!!